Between Overwhelming Power and Fear, Israel's Extremists Have Bound the Majority's Mind

Netanyahu may fall — but without a strategic choice for peace, pessimism will prevail

By Samir Altaqi

There is a story from the old quarter of Al-Hariqa, in Damascus's ancient city: a merchant once asked an expert to price a rare Kashan carpet. The expert coveted the carpet himself but could not afford it, so he handed the merchant a wildly inflated valuation — one that made any honest sale impossible. People said afterwards that the expert had "tied the merchant's head": not by force, but by letting fear of an unfair sale, and fear of loss itself, take command of his judgment.

This is exactly what Itamar Ben-Gvir has done on one side, and Yahya Sinwar did on the other. Each, in effect, mutually instrumentalized the other to tie the head of his own society with a mixture of overwhelming power and existential fear, until abandoning zero-sum security logic came to look, to those whose minds had been bound this way, far costlier than any genuine regional peace.

Earlier generations of Israeli leaders — Eshkol, Eban, Ben-Gurion, Peres, Barak, Olmert — searched in earnest for a peaceful regional climate, treating it as a necessary condition for the prosperity of the Israeli project itself, even when their chosen instrument was deterrence rather than accord. But a frightened man fears even to shake his adversary's hand, even with his own finger on the trigger.

The dilemma began the day Israel's secular, moderate mainstream chose to coexist with — and quietly collude with — its messianic, ideologically extreme fringe: submitting to its perpetual blackmail, and offering it, in exchange for that coexistence, every social and then political inducement available. Not even Rabin's assassination was enough to teach them otherwise.

Since the 1990s, Israel has stopped searching for peace of any kind. Yet it now faces the most dangerous moment of its existence since its founding.

The Israel of 1948 no longer exists. Decisive social transformations have taken place: a gradual demographic shift driven by immigration from Eastern Europe and the growth of conservative communities, alongside the collapse of pan-Arab nationalism and of the Soviet Union. Together these fed a swelling arrogance of power and purged the left and centre in favour of the right — so thoroughly that Israeli negotiators since the 1990 were telling us plainly that the country's younger generation "no longer sees any need for peace, so why concede anything?"

That was a profound turn in how Israel understood its own existence in the region. Instead of pursuing a peaceful climate, it surrendered to the logic of fortifying the castle and raising its walls, betting instead on weakening its strategic surroundings while mutually instrumentalizing, and coexisting with, the extremism on the other side.

Both sides kept betting on a zero-sum outcome, each finding in the other's extremism a justification for further fortification and polarisation. This showed itself in the split within Palestinian politics and in the tacit backing Israel gave to the Hamas project as a way of smothering its moderate alternative; then in the cold war waged against Iran across Syria and Lebanon. The logic of the besieged castle came to dominate, along with a perceived need for greater geographic depth, until coexisting with the surrounding region without ever higher, heavier walls became simply unimaginable.

Israeli elites, Netanyahu foremost among them, went so far as to speak of diversifying alliances toward Russia, Eastern Europe and China — to the point that Washington itself had to remind Tel Aviv of the risk of letting its own rivals into the core of Israel's security architecture.

Then came October 7th, the consecration of this unspoken mutual instrumentalization of extremism. The theory of the wall was punctured by crude, frenzied means, and a toxic mixture of fear, siege and excessive force took hold. Rather than prompting the self-examination that might have reconsidered the theory of the isolated castle, the coexistence with extremism, and the strangling of every moderate voice in the opposing camp, Israel's government instead doubled down on that same zero-sum logic.

That held until war broke out with Iran, and Israel discovered an entirely new world. It can neither relinquish Washington's cover in search of an alternative, nor settle the conflict by expelling the Palestinians. And as America itself turns inward toward its own regional strategy, Israel is discovering, belatedly, that even Trump — who accompanied it to the very last of its objectives — has begun to see it as a burden on his own designs. Its diplomatic isolation has deepened to the point that the Israeli foreign ministry has all but evaporated.

Its accumulated victories, and a surfeit of power unmatched by wisdom, are drawing it ever closer to a Pyrrhic fate: the king undone by his own victories before a single defeat could undo him.

And quite apart from Iran's nuclear programme, whose fate not even Washington has a serious view on, dangers are sprouting around Israel like mushrooms that need no reactor and no enriched uranium — a drone that costs no more than a mobile phone, a missile guided with sufficient precision.

The election is the moment in which Israel's collective judgment is put to the test. On the eve of a vote that may well topple Netanyahu, I doubt it will topple the dilemma he leaves behind him. The question this election poses is not who wins the seats, but whether it marks a turning point that unties the bound heads — one that lets a significant bloc of the Israeli elite finally break free of the cocoon of power and fear.

Despite the cultural depth of the Israeli people, what inclines me toward pessimism is that this election is unfolding amid a staggering dose of opportunism among the political class. Netanyahu's rivals are afraid even to feign talk of regional peace, while many of them are quietly seeking alternative foreign passports.

What absurdity: an elite more afraid of the word "peace" than of missiles.

In an era of American retreat from its traditional security guarantees, these dangers are spreading the same way. Raising the walls of the old castle higher is no longer enough, and the castle will never, under any circumstances, substitute for a secure regional climate. Walls do not protect, and technology confers no immunity that can compensate for the absence of peace.

When Yitzhak Rabin drew close to peace, declaring that Israelis and Palestinians "are destined to live together on the same soil, the same land," the extreme fringe of extremism assassinated him — and Israel's elites never troubled themselves to learn the lesson.

Eliminating extremism on both sides of the conflict is not an act of vengeance; it is itself the work of peace. Without dismantling both opposing messianic projects together, Israel remains hostage to the most wretched part of an already wretched Middle East — and the region in turn remains hostage to an Israel that has never settled its own self-image.

Even should Netanyahu fall tomorrow, what leaves me pessimistic is the genuine absence of an alternative generation of leadership, and elites who have not yet recognised the bind of fear and the arrogance of power upon their own heads. Like Hamas's leadership, they will keep up appearances whatever the cost, never daring to confront their public with the true facts of the conflict.

If Israel still wants to prosper in a transforming world and a fluid Middle Eastern marketplace, the choices made at this election, and after it, will be a fateful judgment.

However high the price placed on the carpet, it remains exposed to ruin — even stored in the deepest cellar of the most fortified castle.

And as always, I hope to be wrong Article link https://annah.ar/346801